Ted Cruz Refuses to Say If He Supports Abortion Exceptions: ‘Why Do You Keep Asking?’
During a debate against Rep. Colin Allred on Tuesday night, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz repeatedly refused to say whether he supports the right of victims of rape or incest to have an abortion.
“I’m curious, why do you keep asking me that?” Cruz said to a debate moderator when he was given a third chance to clarify his views on the issue.
Texas has one of the strictest abortion bans in the nation. It does not include exceptions for victims of rape or incest. While the law supposedly allows for abortions to protect a mother’s health, the exception is both so vague and narrow that abortions are virtually nonexistent, which is why maternal mortality has spiked in the state. Last week, the Supreme Court allowed Texas to continue broadly barring emergency abortions, even in hospitals.
Instead of giving a straight answer about whether he thinks abortion bans must contain exceptions, Cruz said abortion should be decided at the state level, and attempted to paint his Democratic opponent, Allred, as the “extreme” one on the issue.
“He has voted in favor of striking down Texas’ law that gives parents the right to be notified and consent,” said Cruz. “He’s voted in favor of striking down Texas’ law and legalizing abortion up to and including the eighth and ninth month of pregnancy.”
Allred was not phased. He pledged to “restore a woman’s right to choose,” and consistently took Cruz to task for his record on abortion.
“You’re not pro-life,” said Allred. “It’s not pro-life to deny women care so long that they can’t have children anymore. It’s not pro-life to force a victim of rape to carry their rapists’ baby. It’s not pro-life that our maternal mortality rate has skyrocketed up by 56 percent. That’s not pro-life, senator. So to every Texas woman at home, every Texas family watching this: understand that when Ted Cruz says he’s pro-life, he doesn’t mean yours.”
With the Senate map looking increasingly difficult for Democrats, the party has become hopeful that the Cruz-Allred race could be a potential pick-up opportunity — even if Texas is a reliably red state. Unlike in past election cycles, Republican operatives appear worried: the Senate Leadership Fund, the primary Super PAC that elects GOP senators, recently warned in an internal memo that Cruz was only leading Allred by 1 percent in its recent polling.
Cruz and Republicans have attempted to knock down Allred’s numbers with ads and messaging claiming he wants to allow transgender children to participate in girls sports.
Asked about this attack line on Tuesday, Allred said: “What he wants you thinking about is kids in bathrooms, so you’re not thinking about women in hospitals, because it’s indefensible.”
He continued. “It’s indefensible that we have Texas women being turned away from hospitals, bleeding out in their cars and waiting rooms, being found by their husbands. … All of a sudden, the protector of women and girls is going to be Senator Cruz, who thinks it’s perfectly reasonable that if a girl is raped by a relative of hers, a victim of incest, that she should be forced to carry that child to term and give birth to it. You think that’s perfectly reasonable, but now you’re going to set yourself up as a protector of women and girls. It’s laughable. And listen, he’s trying to distract you.”
Allred, a civil rights lawyer and former linebacker for the Tennessee Titans, has served as the representative of Texas’s 32nd District since 2019. Cruz is running for a third term in the Senate.
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